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Trump’s Pennsylvania rally: The 40 most eye-popping lines

Trump spoke for just over an hour, with his usual mix of occasionally reading from the teleprompter punctuated by long, now-familiar riffs about his pet subjects — the news media, the Democrats, his place in history — that have only a casual relationship with established facts.

I went through the transcript of Trump’s Pennsylvania speech and picked out some of the most, er, noteworthy lines. They’re below.

1. “Somebody’s going to come and run and they’re going to say, they’re going to do — in the history of this country, you just hit an all-time low. That’s pretty tough to beat.”

Also: Away we go!

2. “Man, this is a lot of people.”

No one loves a crowd like Donald Trump. And no one loves pointing out the size of a crowd like Donald Trump. The crowd size was estimated by local media only as “thousands.” (Worth noting: Montoursville is a town of just 4,000 people.)

3. “I think next time we’ll just have to get a bigger hanger. That’s a big hanger. We’re going to have to get a bigger hanger.”

8. “Wow. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of people. Looks like the Academy Awards used to look before they decided to go political against us.”

Two things here. First, Trump is always aware of the media covering him — and makes sure his supporters, who ostensibly hate the media, know just how many are covering him. Second, he is always fighting the culture war — the idea that the Academy Awards were once good but have now gone “political” against “us” is one that will have lots of Trump supporters nodding in agreement.

9. “And more than 5 million Americans have been lifted off of food stamps.”

10. “When you have the best unemployment numbers in history, when you have the best economy probably that we’ve ever had, I don’t know. Now the hell do you lose this election? Right?”

[raised hand] By talking about lots of things other than the state of the economy — like, say, repealing the Affordable Care Act.

11. “Remember the polls, the fake polls that they put out. Suppression. They call them suppression polls. ‘Pennsylvania will go to Hillary Clinton.’ Unfortunately for them, it didn’t work out that way.”

What Trump is referring to as “suppression polls” are more commonly known as “polls.” His insinuation is that pollsters purposely released misleading data that showed Clinton ahead to keep Trump voters from turning out. He provides no evidence — likely because none exists — for this claim.

12. “So, do you remember that night? They wouldn’t announce Pennsylvania. There was 1% left. If I lost every single vote, I would win.”

13. “I did it, and now it’s beautiful. People not coming in, it’s beautiful.”

Told you Trump liked the word “beautiful.” And, he’s talking about the wall in San Diego here.

14.”Because we always win. Somehow we always find a way to win.”

Yeah, yeah, this all checks out. I did the math.

15. “You know, normally I could do other things tonight. I like you. I love this state. I figured, hey, it’s a Monday. We have an election tomorrow. Who the hell wants to sit around doing nothing on Monday night? Right?”

Monday is the new Thursday. Everybody knows this.

16. “And you know what, if we aren’t smart it will end for you with the Second Amendment.”

There is scant evidence that any Democrat running for president would abolish the Second Amendment. Plus, there’s this — from the National Constitution Center: “In simple odds, the chance of any constitutional amendment being repealed would be roughly the same as a person living to 80 years old being struck by lightning during their lifetime, according to National Weather Service data.”

17. “I don’t know if there are other races or not. Who the hell cares?”

Same.

18. “I never want to be called loser.”

The truest — and most self-aware — thing Donald Trump has said in a very long time.

19. “And maybe if we like it a lot, and if things keep going like they’re going, we’ll go and we’ll do what we have to do. We’ll do it three and a four and a five.”

20. “And you know, one of the things we’re talking about the greatest probably, I think, political slogan of all time is what you have on your hats. Make America Great Again.”

Humility has never been one of Trump’s strong suits.

21. “Do we keep our logo? Do we keep our slogan? Make America Great Again or it’s very risky. Changing the most successful slogan has to be.”

[scratches head, looks off in the distance] So, uh, well, yeah.

22. “Our military’s strong, our Second Amendment is good.”

Quick update on the Second Amendment: It’s “good.”

23. “They want to knock down all buildings in Manhattan and rebuild them without windows.”

No, “they” don’t. What New York City has proposed is retrofitting buildings of 25,000 square feet or more to make them more energy-efficient.

24. “This is a cheap poll but it’s better than any poll you could get. You ever see the yard and they interview like 103 people. I’ve got thousands here tonight.”

What’s he talking about? Oh, an applause “poll” on whether he should keep his slogan as “make America Great Again” or “Keep America Great.” Natch.

25. “Even with that powerful man’s voice, I love that guy. I think I’m in love.”

A real quote from the real President of the United States.

26. “Look at the thousands and thousands of people we have, now he said he had 600 people.”

If Trump loves anything more than his crowd sizes, it’s comparing those crowd sizes to other allegedly smaller crowds for his political opponents. In this case, the “he” refers to former Vice President Joe Biden — and his formal campaign kickoff in Philadelphia over the weekend. (The Biden crowd was estimated at 6,000.)

27. “We’ve lost 60,000, not jobs, listen to this. Sixty thousand factories, here’s the good news. We’re building them all back. They’re coming back. All coming back.”

All 60,000 factories Trump claims were lost by NAFTA are coming back? This seems like a big story!

28. “Our country is full. We don’t want people coming up here. Our country is full. We want Mexico to stop. We want all of them to stop. Our country is packed to the gills. We don’t want them coming up”

This probably goes without saying but: Our country is not “full” (and it’s not even clear what that would look like). Also: There’s a very big difference between saying that we don’t want any more immigrants to this country and saying we can’t fit any more immigrants in this country.

29. “What’s going on with Fox by the way? What’s going on there? They’re putting more Democrats on than you have Republicans. There’s strange is going on at Fox. Something every strange.”

By “strange” Trump means “Fox isn’t kowtowing to me and my policies at all times.” (For more on the Trump-Fox News tension, read this.)

30. “And [South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg] was knocking the hell out of Fox and Fox put him — somebody’s going to have to explain the whole Fox deal to me.”

This comment reveals how little Trump understands about how media organizations are supposed to work. Putting on a variety of voices is a good thing, not a bad thing.

31. “I tell you right — even tonight I see their way — the way they’re working and I hope the cameras get to see this crowd.”

He likes his crowd size. I did warn you.

32. “They don’t like to show the crowd. Explain that to me.”

The “they” is the media. This is a standard Trump line. And it’s never been true. No matter how many times he repeats it.

33. “We passed a largest package of tax cuts in the history of our country.”

34. “These crazy lights. And they look like they cost a fortune too, I don’t know. I don’t know who — I don’t know who got those lights but they’re very bright. A real genius got those lights.“

Light-gate, continued.

35. “These are the values that unite people all across this magnificent state of Pennsylvania, where, by the way, I went to school. I went to school in Pennsylvania.”

I hadn’t heard that before.

36. “They were spying on our campaign. I’ll tell you what, if that ever happened to the other side this thing would have been over two years ago and you know it would have been treason. They would have called it treason and that’s what it is.”

Trump is referring to the surveillance of a former aide — Carter Page — as part of the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. And this “spying” was totally lawful — approved by a FISA court and re-approved three times. Just saying.

37. “I had such an easy life. People say, I had such an easy life. Who the hell knew it was going to be this difficult, but I love it.”

Wait, being president is hard? I had never thought of that!

38. “I come to the great state of Pennsylvania, and I say ‘Oh, I need some help let me call, let’s see Russia. Let’s call Russia.’ It’s the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on this country.”

To be clear: We know from the Mueller report that Russia sought to interfere in the election to help Trump and hurt Clinton. They did so using a sophisticated social media campaign targeted at swing states that reached tens of millions of people via Facebook alone.

39. “We are going to make our stand and it’s a tough stand and it’s a beautiful stand.”

A truly beautiful stand.

40. “And don’t forget Biden deserted you. He’s not from Pennsylvania. I guess he was born here, but he left you folks. He left you for another state.”

Biden left his home state of Pennsylvania when he was 10 years old! Not really sure that counts as having “deserted” the people of Pennsylvania. This feels like a good place to end.